The present disclosure relates to a solar cell and a method of manufacturing the same.
Solar cells are devices that convert solar light into an electric energy. Also, the solar cells may be referred to electronic devices that generate electricity using two types of semiconductor such as a P-type semiconductor and an N-type semiconductor. A principle of such a solar cell is described as follows. First, when light is irradiated onto the solar cell, electrons and holes are generated within the solar cell. The generated charges are moved into P and N poles. As a result, an electric potential difference is generated between the P pole and the N pole, and thus, current flows due to the electric potential difference.
Solar cells attracting more attention due to an exhaustion of energy resources have efficiency of about 25%. Thus, solar cells formed of various materials and having efficiency greater than that of a related art silicon solar cell are being disclosed. For example, one of the solar cells may include a GaN-based solar cell. Among these, InGaN was widely used as an active material for a related art LED having an emission length of a range from a UV region to a green spectrum region or a laser diode. However, since InGaN is capable of adjusting a band gap in all alloy fields, InGaN is in the spotlight as a material of a novel solar cell having characteristics such as high carrier mobility, a high drift velocity, radiation resistance, and a light absorption property of about 105 cm-1 that is about a band boundary.
However, a GaN-based solar cell reported up until the present day has a structure in which a rigid substrate such as a silicon or sapphire substrate includes an InGaN layer. Thus, an InGaN-based solar cell realized on a flexible substrate does not have been disclosed up to now. Furthermore, there is a limitation that an extreme manufacturing process of a solar cell such as a high-temperature semiconductor process extremely limits a substrate selection range.